Alexei Yagudin

I always found Yagudin more interesting as a skater anyways. And he was better at his peak. To bad an injury derailed his career but at least he won the OGM before he had to quit.

Some posters keep using Plushenko's threads to gush over Alexei Yagudin. Now, we all know Plushenko wouldn't mind but I think Alexei deserves his own love thread.
Maybe it's more fun to be offtopic on Plushy's threads , but I invite all Alexei's fans to post here long and often.

For me, this is probably the most favorite performance by Alexei. Though he did not win World title, I love this one, more than his OGM-winning The Man in the Iron Mask. He shows so much emotion. He lost SP (3rd place), so was ON FIRE.

Was that 3A-half loop-3S? or -3F? What a 'gorgeous' combination! Who else can do that among the current crops of skaters? Hanyu. And Aaron, maybe.
I also love Alexei's speed while doing Circular Step and Straightline Step Sqs, which I miss under CoP rules these days.

Off topic: I often love watching performances in the Free of those who made mistakes in SP or who got lowbelled in SP unfortunately. Because they are ON FIRE. e.g. Gracie at 2013 US Nats and Dai at Japanese Nats come to my mind.

What I'd love to see is the BESP version of Yagudin's 2002 Oly's FS - I remember it as this amazing moment - one of my favourite skating moments ever - and then I found some, I believe, American commentator-vid of it where they basically came across as saying that it was so-so - I believe they used the word "conservative", for instance. Also, they didn't seem sure that he had won, and I remember not one vestige of doubt about it... What a weird feeling... So, if anyone's seen a BESP vid, please post it! (Oh, how I mourn having lost the BESP commentary! I want it baaaaaaack - but, sorry, I digress... )

At Sears Open 2001. Wow, 3F, 3A and 3S while holding two knives!
Loved his step sequences!

Off topic: personally I still wanted that Joubert would have kept his previous Free 'The Inception', but after watching this, it's understandable and forgivable that Brian dropped it and wanted to go for 'Gladiator'.

The performance is nowhere near clean, but the intensity, the passion, and the abandon that Alexei skated with in especially in the second half of the program is just staggering.

As for a lesser-known Alexei program, I really liked his Broken Arrow LP as well: http://youtu.be/4Qtl44YyBEc
I thought Broken Arrow was quite an interesting program and I'm sad that he dumped it for Tosca at 2000 Worlds.